Return to Fractured Hand in Paintings

Text on the left side of Fractured Hand:

A man paints with his brain and not with his hands. - Michelangelo...The eye of the master will do more than both of his hands. - Benjamin Franklin...Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious. - Michele de Montaigne...Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. - Carl Jung...People who work with their hands are laborers. People who work with their hands and their heads are craftsmen. People who work with their hands, their heads and their hearts are artists. - Saint Francis of Assisi...Now join your hands and with your hands your hearts. - William Shakespeare...I wanna hold your hand. - The Beatles...What is the sound of one hand clapping?...a Zen koan...Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. - Picasso...The hand is the visible part of the brain. - I.Kant...You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. - Golda Meir...Do not rule out working with your hands. It does not rule out using your head. - A.Rooney

Text on the right side of Fractured Hand:

With the patient under general anesthesia and after identification of the patient's name and operative site, the left arm was prepped and draped in the usual sterile technique.  A tourniquet had been placed over the left proximal brachium over webril and draped free.  The patient had been given 1 g IV Ancef as wound prophylaxis.  The left arm was exsanguinated with an Esmarch bandage and the tourniquet was inflated to 200 mg. Hg.  An incision was fashioned on the radial side of the fifth metacarpal and taken down through the skin.  Loupe magnification was used.  Small bleeders were cauterized as they were encountered.  The extensor tendons were identified and mobilized. The fracture was approximately two weeks old and early organizing callus was noted.  The fracture was identified and freed of soft tissue, cleaned and irrigated with normal saline containing antibiotic solution.  Fracture was next mobilized.  It was difficult to hold the fracture due to the spiral obliquity and therefore 22-gauge wires were temporarily used in a cerclage fashion to hold the reduction while screws were placed and these were removed.  The screws were placed using AO Lag technique and trying to stay perpendicular to the fracture.  Good stability was obtained.  The periosteum was closed over the screws.  The tourniquet was deflated.

(This written procedural description was provided to the patient following a successful surgery.  Additonal text from that description was not included in the painting titled Fractured Hand.)